标题: Transgenders in Wellesley, and Other Women’s Colleges [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 11-9-2014 18:44 标题: Transgenders in Wellesley, and Other Women’s Colleges 本帖最后由 choi 于 11-10-2014 09:41 编辑
Ruth Padawer, 美国精英女子学院遭遇性别认同挑战. 纽约时报中文网. Nov 10, 2014
cn.tmagazine.com/culture/20141110/t10wellesley/
, which is translated from
Ruth Padawer, Sisterhood is Complicated. What is a women’s college when gender is fluid? New York Times Magazine, Oct 19, 2014 (cover story, which says. “Men of Wellesley. Can women’s colleges survive the transgender movement?”).
Quote:
“Some two dozen other matriculating students at Wellesley don’t identify as women. Of those, a half-dozen or so were trans men, people born female who identified as men, some of whom had begun taking testosterone to change their bodies. The rest said they were transgender or genderqueer, rejecting the idea of gender entirely or identifying somewhere between female and male
“In the 19th century [in US], only men were admitted to most colleges and universities, so proponents of higher education for women had to build their own. * * * but most [wome’s colleges] were nevertheless premised on traditional notions: College-educated women were considered more likely to be engaging wives and better mothers, who would raise informed citizens. * * * even in the early 1960s, Wellesley, for example, taught students how to get groceries into the back of a station wagon without exposing their thighs. By the late 1960s * * * Amid the growing awareness of civil rights and women’s liberation, academic separation based on gender, as with race, seemed increasingly outdated. As a vast majority of women opted for coed schools, enrollment at women’s colleges tumbled. The number of women’s colleges dropped to fewer than 50 today from nearly 300.
“As women’s colleges challenged the conventions of womanhood, they drew a disproportionate number of students who identified as lesbian or bisexual. Today a small but increasing number of students at those schools do not identify as women, raising the question of what it means to be a ‘women’s college.’ Trans students are pushing their schools to play down the women-centric message.
“What’s a women’s college to do? Trans students point out that they’re doing exactly what these schools encourage: breaking gender barriers, fulfilling their deepest yearnings and forging ahead even when society tries to hold them back. But yielding to their request to dilute the focus on women would undercut the identity of a women’s college.
“A few schools have formulated responses to this dilemma, albeit very different ones. Hollins University, a small women’s college in Virginia, established a policy several years ago stating it would confer diplomas to only women. It also said that students who have surgery or begin hormone therapy to become men — or who legally take male names — will be ‘helped to transfer to another institution.’ Mount Holyoke and Mills College, on the other hand, recently decided they will not only continue to welcome students who become trans men while at school but will also admit those who identify on their applications as trans men, noting that welcoming the former and not the latter seemed unjustifiably arbitrary. But most women’s colleges, including Wellesley, consider only female applicants. Once individuals have enrolled and announced that they are trans, the schools, more or less, leave it to the students to work out how trans classmates fit into a women’s college.
“When Jesse [Austin] arrived on campus in the fall of 2009, his name was Sara. * * * Around the middle of Sara’s first year at Wellesley, she attended a presentation by trans alums, including one who was in the process of transitioning. As Sara listened, the gender dysphoria she’d always felt suddenly made sense. * * * She learned [through her inquiry] that unlike previous generations, today’s trans young adults don’t consider physical transformation a prerequisite for identity. Some use hormones; some have their breasts removed in ‘top’ surgery; some reject medical interventions altogether, as unnecessary invasions and expense. She discovered that sexual orientation is independent of gender: Some trans men are attracted to women, some to men, some to both. * * * By second semester [of Sarah’s first year in Wellesley], he was using male pronouns and calling himself Jesse, the other name his mother had considered for her daughter. He also joined a tiny campus group for students who knew or suspected they were trans men. It was called Brothers, a counterweight to the otherwise ubiquitous message of sisterhood. That summer, Jesse saw a gender therapist, and early in his sophomore year, he began injecting testosterone into his thigh every two weeks, making him one of the first students to medically transform into a man while at Wellesley. * * * Jesse decided he wanted to have top surgery over winter break, and his parents agreed to pay for it. * * * Having been on testosterone for two years at that point, Jesse no longer looked like a woman trying to pass as a man. His voice was deep. His facial hair was thick, though he kept it trimmed to a stubble. His shoulders had become broad and muscular, his hips narrow, his arms and chest more defined. * * * Because bathrooms in the [Wellesley] dorms are not labeled ‘women’ or ‘men’ but rather ‘Wellesley only’ and ‘non-Wellesley,’ students who didn’t know Jesse would call him out for using the ‘Wellesley only’ bathroom instead of the one for visitors. When he tried to explain he was a Wellesley student, people sometimes thought he was lying.
“Others [real women in Wellesley] were upset that even at a women’s college, women were still expected to accommodate men * * * Despite all that, many were uneasy: As a marginalized group fighting for respect and clout, how could women justify marginalizing others?
“Alex [Poon] isn’t a her, and he told me that his happiness and success includes being recognized for what he is: a man.
“On the second day of orientation this fall, Eli Cohen[, now a senior,] arrived on campus in a muscle T and men’s shorts, with a carabiner full of keys hanging from his belt loop. * * * We [author and Eli] hung out in the Lulu Chow Wang Campus Center, known affectionately as Lulu * * * Just 12 days earlier, Eli underwent top surgery, which he said gave him a newfound self-assurance in his projection of manhood. It had been nine months since he started testosterone, and the effects had become particularly noticeable over the three-month summer break. His jaw line had begun to square, his limbs to thicken and the hair on his arms and legs to darken. * * * Though Eli secretly suspected in high school that he was a boy, it wasn’t until after he arrived at Wellesley that he could imagine he might one day declare himself a man. By his second year, he had buzz-cut his hair and started wearing men’s clothes. * * * His parents live only 14 miles away and [at the time, when he was a sophomore] dropped by for short visits. He left his girl nameplate on his dorm door. His friends understood that whenever his parents arrived, everyone was to revert to his female name and its attendant pronouns. * * * By summer’s end [after his sophomore year], he began introducing himself as Eli, a name utterly unlike his birth name. Eli mustered the courage to tell his parents. It took a little while for his mother to accept that her only daughter was actually a son, but she came around. When I asked Eli if trans men belonged at Wellesley, he said he felt torn.
“Wellesley’s deeply conflicted identity
“Rose Layton, a lesbian who said she views trans students as competitors in the campus dating scene. ‘They flirt with them, hook up with them. And it’s not just the hetero women, but even people in the queer community.’ * * * Jesse Austin noticed the paradox when he returned to campus with a man’s build and full swath of beard stubble after nearly two years on testosterone. ‘That was the first time in my life I was popular! People [real women in Wellesley] were clamoring to date me.’
“Kaden Mohamed said he felt downright objectified when he returned from summer break last year, after five months of testosterone had lowered his voice, defined his arm muscles and reshaped his torso. It was attention that he had never experienced before he transitioned. But as his body changed, students he didn’t even know would run their hands over his biceps. Once at the school pub, an intoxicated Wellesley woman even grabbed his crotch and that of another trans man. ‘It’s this very bizarre reversal of what happens in the real world,’ Kaden said. ‘In the real world, it’s women who get fetishized, catcalled, sexually harassed, grabbed. At Wellesley, it’s trans men who do. If I were to go up to someone I just met and touch her body, I’d get grief from the entire Wellesley community, because they’d say it’s assault — and it is. But for some reason, when it’s done to trans men here, it doesn’t get read the same way. It’s like a free pass, that suddenly it’s OK to talk about or touch someone’s body as long as they’re not a woman.’
“While trans men are allowed at most women’s colleges if they identify as female when applying, trans women — people raised male who go on to identify as women — have found it nearly impossible to get through the campus gates. Arguably, a trans woman’s identity is more compatible with a women’s college than a trans man’s is. But most women’s colleges require that all of an applicant’s documentation indicate the candidate is female. That’s a high bar for a 17- or 18-year-old born and raised male, given that so few come out as trans in high school. (Admissions policies at private undergraduate schools are exempt from Title IX, which bans gender discrimination at schools receiving federal funds.) * * *For its part, Wellesley has never admitted a trans woman, at least not knowingly. * * * In May, Mills College became the first women’s college to broaden its admissions policy to include self-identified trans women, even those who haven’t legally or medically transitioned
“Last month, Mount Holyoke College announced a more far-reaching policy: It would admit all academically qualified students regardless of their anatomy or self-proclaimed gender, except for those biologically male at birth who still identify as male. * * * The school president, Lynn Pasquerella, said she and her officers made the decision after concluding it was an issue of civil rights. * * * She mentioned she taught a class in critical race theory two years ago and told her students, ‘When I use the term “sisterhood,” I’m using it in a way that acknowledges the fact that not everybody here identifies as a woman. It is a rhetorical device . . . , but it is not intended to exclude anybody.’ I said her explanation seemed like the one for using ‘he’ as a generic pronoun for a male or female. She offered a different analogy, noting the parallel between women’s colleges and historically black colleges and universities. ‘Isn’t it still legitimate to speak of being a community of color even if you have half a dozen students who aren’t individuals of color?’ she asked. ‘The same might be said about women’s colleges.’ 作者: choi 时间: 11-9-2014 18:46
Note:
(a) “At Mills College, a women’s school in California, even the president of student government identifies as male.”
Mills College
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mills_College
(private; Established 1852 as a seminary for women; in 1865, a couple with the surname Mills bought it and changed its anme; Location Oakland, California)
(b) Hollins University
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollins_University
(private; Established 1842, a couple with the surname Hollins was a benefactors; Location Roanoke, Virginia
(c) “Regis College, a women’s school that went coed in 2007 to reverse its tanking enrollment”
Regis College (Massachusetts)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regis_College_(Massachusetts)
(private (Catholic); Located at Weston, a Boston suburb); “founded in 1927 by the Sisters of St Joseph. The college took its name from the Reverend Mother Mary Regis Casserly [born Annie Casserly, religious name was Mary Regis], who established the Sisters of St. Joseph in Boston in 1873”)
(d) call somebody out = challenge sb for a fight
(e) Wellesley “President H Kim Bottomly”
The English surname BottomlEy is after “a place in West Yorkshire named Bottomley, from Old English botm ‘broad valley’ + leah ‘woodland clearing.’”
(f) “If I were to go up to someone I just met and touch her body, I’d get grief from the entire Wellesley community, because they’d say it’s assault — and it is.”
grief (n): "(informal) trouble or annoyance <people were giving me grief for leaving ten minutes early>" www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/grief
(g) I will not reproduce the last five paragraphs (which you should read), except noting “America, the Beautiful” has lyrics that concludes with “‘And crown thy good, with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea!’ Those words were penned by Katharine Lee Bates, an 1880 graduate of Wellesley who” was a lesbian.
(i) The preceding sentence is: “God shed his grace on thee.” So God is the subject, crown, a verb (the same as “God save the queen” where the verb is in singular form), and “good,” noun.
(ii) God Save the Queen
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Save_the_Queen
(is the British national anthem)